Teaser Tuesday 12/4/2012: The Apocalypse Troll

So at the moment I’m reading a book by David Weber with the somewhat unfortunate title The Apocalypse Troll, which always makes me snicker a little, perhaps because of Dennis the Vizsla’s run-in with Obvious Troll a few years ago. (However, the Troll in this book is not obvious. At least, not once it stops firing nukes at the U.S. Navy.)

I picked up The Apocalypse Troll directly from Baen’s web site while it was temporarily available for free. It’s now back to $5, but Baen has a number of other free e-books available in various formats, including a few of David Weber’s “Honor Harrington” series, which contain some superlative engagements between enemy spaceship fleets. The Troll book starts off with a pretty good space battle, but then spends most of its time earthbound, with the sole survivor of a human battle group trying to catch the sole survivor of an alien (sort of) battle group. And just when it seems like the alien is going to go the usual route of trying to take over the world by force, it decides to get sneaky instead …

“Some son-of-a-bitch just firebombed Saint Joe’s,” the police chief said, and the mayor closed his eyes, thinking of fire raging through the city’s largest hospital. “I’ve got a report from Bill McCoury, too. He says Biltmore House is on fire.”

Bonus points will be awarded for identifying the city that’s under attack based on that teaser!

And now, of course, here is this week’s teaser for The War of the Ravels:

“Yeah, well, you sort of foisted Brannoc off on me, as I recall, but you were all gung-ho to be Ambrosia. You always wanted to be someone else, as long as I’ve known you; you even had that doll, remember, the one where you made pointy ears out of construction paper and glued them to its head.”